Google Keyword Planner

Definition

Google Keyword Planner is the keyword research tool built into Google Ads. It surfaces keyword ideas, estimated monthly search volume, competition levels, and the bid ranges advertisers are paying, so you can plan and budget paid search campaigns.

In depth

Google Keyword Planner lives inside the Google Ads account and exists to help you plan campaigns. Type in a service or a competitor's site and it returns related search terms, roughly how often each is searched, how competitive it is, and what a click tends to cost at the top of the page. Those bid estimates make it the practical starting point for any keyword research behind a pay-per-click campaign.

For a contractor, it answers two budget-shaping questions before a single dollar is spent: are enough people actually searching for this service in my area, and what will a click cost? Discovering that 'bathroom remodel [city]' has real volume at a workable cost per acquisition — while a niche term has almost none — is exactly the kind of insight that decides which campaigns are worth running and how much to fund them.

The pitfall is reading its volume numbers as precise — they're broad ranges that get less specific on accounts spending little, and the search counts lump close variants together. Treating them as exact leads to bad forecasts and a weak Quality Score when the chosen terms don't match real intent. WellBuilt uses it for direction and cost-band sizing, then validates with real campaign data, because what a keyword actually costs and converts to only shows once it's running.

Worked example

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